In the 80's my wife decided the boys needed a computer. And, if I didn't pick one out, she would. A friend at work recommended the TI 99/4A, so we bought one. As it turned out, the boys didn't care anything about it. But, I did. I learned to program in basic and even wrote some pretty neat software. I had a lot of fun with it and eventually bought a Commodore 64 which I practically wore out. The keyboard is shiny from my hand resting on it.
In '93, I bought a generic IBM 286 compatible. Since then I've built several from components. It was fun, but no longer worth doing. Our present machines are stock Dell and Lenovo.
Don